Nasan Tur Interrogates the Uses of Power through Lifelessness in Hunted @ Berlinische Galerie in Berlin

Nasan Tur deals with the political and social conditions of our time. His works are experimental arrangements that make ideologies, social norms and behavior patterns visible and expand them to include possibilities for individual action. To do this, he examines statements, gestures and images that he finds in the media and public space and condenses them into miniatures of current social crises and discourses. The focus is on the question of how predetermined role models influence us and when we are ready to cross boundaries and actively change social patterns in the face of oppression, powerlessness and manipulation.

New works were created for Hunted, his current exhibition at Berlinische Galerie, which deal with questions of the exercise of power and its legitimacy. Why do people kill? What violence lies within us, and how and under what circumstances is it activated? By arranging the works in space, Tur creates images that express an ambivalent attitude toward death and life. They range from confronting one's own inner demons to questioning hunters and the act of killing to the careful staging of lifeless animals in space.

Hunted is on view through April 1st at Berlinische Galerie, Berlin’s Museum of Modern Art, Photography and Architecture Alte Jakobstraße 124–128, 10969 Berlin.

Tolia Astakhishvili's "The First Finger (Chapter II)" @ Haus Am Waldsee

photography by Frank Sperling


Tolia Astakhishvili (*1974 in Tbilisi, Georgia) transforms the Haus am Waldsee with an expansive installation that constitutes her solo exhibition The First Finger (chapter II).

Her works follow the structures and narratives of existing buildings, conjuring up real and imaginary stories through temporary installations and alterations. In her exhibition The First Finger (chapter II), Astakhishvili examines the physical composition of Haus am Waldsee by exploring its architectural layers and peripheral areas. Through architectural interventions, she condenses the spaces of the former home into an arresting and fragile environment in which the domestic sphere is reimagined. Architecture doubles here as both a protective shell and as something that appears to be exceedingly precarious.

In addition to structural interventions, drawings, paintings, text, and videos, the exhibition includes new collaborative works with Zurab Astakhishvili, Dylan Peirce, and James Richards, as well as contributions by Antonin Artaud, Alvin Baltrop, Kirsty Bell, Nat Marcus, Vera Palme, Andreas Rousounelis, Judith Scott, Ser Serpas, and Giorgi Zhorzholiani.

The First Finger is realised in two chapters: chapter I at Bonner Kunstverein, curated by Fatima Hellberg (March 25–July 30, 2023), and chapter II at Haus am Waldsee in Berlin, curated by Beatrice Hilke (June 23–September 24, 2023).

Dozie Kanu's World Building Tools: An Interview From The Biodiversity Issue →

 
 

text by Oliver Kupper
portraits by Parker Woods 

Dozie Kanu’s practice is a conceptual exploration of colonial and hegemonic politics, architecture, spatial narratives, and so much more. Born in Houston, Texas in 1993, and now based in Santarém, Portugal, Kanu’s investigation of cultural artifacts belies an America still grappling with not only its troubled past, but also its troubled present. Razor-sharp, anti-climb, raptor spikes, a visual and physical deterrent for vandals and undesirables, find their way onto one of his sculptures modeled as a baby crib, an emblematic nod to the countless divisions that are psychologically embedded at birth. There is something alchemical about Kanu’s reimagined objects of our urban visual landscape, like an ATM blasted with a thick layer of black epoxy sculpting clay, or a poured concrete chair in “crack rock beige” that sits on a spoked tire rim, that gives Kanu’s work a kind of authentic reclamation of power in a grief-stricken zeitgeist. We caught up with Kanu on a rare visit to Los Angeles, before the opening of his exhibition, to prop and ignore, at Manual Arts, to discuss tools for building a more socially equitable world. Read more.

A Visit To The Miles C. Bates “Wave House” In Palm Desert

With it’s patented curving roof that mimics the peaks of the surrounding San Jacinto Mountains, the iconic Miles C. Bates “Wave House” has been brilliantly and expertly restored by Los Angeles-based Stayner Architects and is now available to book for overnight stays. Every inch of the home in its original incarnation—before a devastating series of remodels—has been reconsidered with exacting precision, save for a few minor modern amenities that enhance the home’s livability and that continue the architect’s vision for domestic desert bliss. Built for an archetypal, midcentury American playboy and sculptor, Miles C. Bates in 1955 by architect and inventor Walter S. White—a former apprentice of Rudolf Schindler—the house exudes the charm of high, but moderate living and square footage devoted to only the essentials; a less-is-more ethos that gives midcentury architecture its understated grandeur. But, while the physical footprint might be minimal, the house feels anything but cramped. The maximization and utilization of space makes the Wave House feel larger than life, a type of floor planning that belongs to only the greatest architects. Large sliding steel-framed glass doors and clerestory windows create a seamless transition from the great indoors to the great outdoors. The roller coaster roof undulates, giving the entire house a kind of oneness that is alluring and near mystical. With original terrazzo floors and ash wood panels, the house is a masterpiece of materiality and sensuous glamour; even the automated curtains have a kind of burlesque eroticism. A small cactus enclosure feels like a private peep show for thirsty and thorny flora. At night, a soaking tub beckons just steps from the bedroom. As architect and engineer Marcus Vitruvius opined in his treatise for Roman architecture, that in order for buildings to have the perfect proportions, they must have three attributes: firmitas, utilitas and venustas (strength, utility and beauty). The Wave House has all three in spades. Click here to book your stay.

[AUTRE ARCHIVE] Read Oliver Kupper's Essay On Los Angeles' Iconic Westin Bonaventure From Our Winter 2018 Issue →

 
Westin Bonaventure, exterior, elevated view to northwest, May 1989 Michael Portman, The Westin Bonaventure Collection

Westin Bonaventure, exterior, elevated view to northwest, May 1989
Michael Portman, The Westin Bonaventure Collection

 

Click here to read.

Watch Cerimonia By Radical Italian Architecture Utopians Superstudio

"Cerimonia" is the third chapter in the "Atti Fondamentali" (Fundamental Acts), a series of five stories each dedicated to a primary act in human life: Life, Education, Ceremony, Love, Death. The five stories, conceived as a sort of philosophical and anthropological reconstruction of architecture, first appeared, as texts, images and storyboard, on the pages of "Casabella" magazine in 1972 and 1973.

Olafur Eliasson: In real life @ Tate Modern in London

Olafur Eliasson: In real life marks the most comprehensive solo presentation of the artist’s work, and his first major survey in the UK. Eliasson consistently seeks to make his art relevant to society, engaging the public in memorable ways both inside and outside the gallery. Driven by his interests in perception, movement, and the interaction of people and their environments, he creates artworks which offer experiences that can be shared by all visitors. The exhibition also examines Eliasson’s engagement with issues of climate change, sustainable energy, migration, as well as architecture. Olafur Eliasson: In real life offers a timely opportunity to experience the immersive world of the endlessly inquisitive artist.

Olafur Eliasson: In real life is on view through January 5, 2020 at Tate Modern Bankside, London SE1 9TG. photographs courtesy of Tate Modern

Opening Of James Herman's 'ISLAND' @ Ibid Gallery In Los Angeles

ISLAND is the second solo exhibition that James Herman has presented with Ibid Gallery. Using sculpture, painting, and printmaking alongside his homesteading practice, Herman’s work straddles alternative off-the-grid building methods with the legacy of Postwar American painting in his psychedelic, referential-laden forms and their social function. Herman’s painted plywood panels and architectural dwellings act as reflectors and spatial activators for his ultimate conceptual practice: a radical domesticity based in sustainability, self-reliance, subsistence, and repetitive labor. ISLAND is on view through October 27 at Ibid Gallery 670 S Anderson Street, Los Angeles. photographs by Lani Trock

Fourth Annual MAK Games @ The John Lautner Designed Sheats-Goldstein Residence In Los Angeles

The MAK Games features semi-finals and final tennis tournament matches, followed by a Pro-Am match, followed by a dance party in the incomparable “Club James” hidden below the infinity tennis court. The players come from the worlds of art, design, architecture, and entertainment. photographs by Oliver Maxwell Kupper

Dan Graham's 'New Works By A Small-Town Boy' @ Regen Projects

For over fifty years, Graham’s expansive multidisciplinary practice has encompassed video, sculpture, photography, performance, installation, and a prolific body of writing on religion, music, art, architecture, garden design, and popular culture. Forming a central theoretical thread throughout the course of his career, his work has examined the function and role of architecture in contemporary society, and how it frames and reflects public life. Since the 1970s he has produced what he refers to as pavilions, hybrid constructions that are part architecture and part sculpture. Inspired by ornamental buildings found in 17th and 18th century European pleasure gardens, Graham’s sculptural pavilions are comprised of simple geometric forms and constructed using materials associated with corporate architecture like metal, aluminum, transparent and/or two-way mirrored glass, and sometimes juxtaposed with natural elements like hedges. Functioning as built environments, the pavilions create unusual optical and physical experiences for the viewer – blurring the lines between public and private space – and making apparent that our material surroundings structure the very core of our societies by determining the form of our vision and sight.

A selection of photographs relating to his seminal magazine artwork, Homes for America(1966), and taken by Graham during a 2006 visit to his native suburban New Jersey, feature images of diverse architectural styles punctuated with lawns, topiaries, and shrubs. Displayed in a sequenced formation on the gallery walls, each image highlights Graham’s interest in serial structures, topology, and systems of information as evident in the peculiar color ranges, materials, and repetitive geometries of the suburban American landscape. A series of architectural models and video works provide further context for his ongoing exploration of the built world. New Works By A Small-Town Boy is on view at Regen Projects through August 18. 6750 Santa Monica Boulevard, Los Angeles. photographs Oliver Kupper

Read Our Interview Of Lauren Halsey On The Occasion Of Her Funkadelic Installation At MOCA Los Angeles →

Lauren Halsey’s dream-world is cosmic, funky, carpeted, and technicolored; an atemporal, fantastical, and hyperreal vision of black liberation which she conjures via site-specific installations that celebrate her childhood home. Click here to read more.

Kate Parfet's Mirror Domme Launch Party @ The Home of Kulapat Yantrasast In Venice

Autre launches Mirror Domme, Kate Parfet’s debut book of poetry. This first collection is strewed buckshot of intimate recollections told in delirious balancing of lyrical phrase and fragmented prose. Inspired by the sudden death of a lover, these poems – as if written in part with invisible ink – illumine for the speaker a new self, one that dares to be visible in the context of loss. photographs by Oliver Kupper

Highlights from Olafur Eliasson's Reality Projector Experience @ The Marciano Art Foundation

Reality Projector is a site-specific installation created for the foundation’s expansive first floor Theater Gallery. Eliasson has conceived of a seemingly simple, yet complex installation that uses projected light and the existing architecture of the space to create a dynamic shadow play. The artwork references the space’s former function as a theater as well as the history of filmmaking in the city by turning the entire space into an abstract, three-dimensional film. Eliasson’s exhibition offers visitors the opportunity to fully experience the magnificence of the space free of objects. Reality Projector will be on view beginning March 1, 2018 and will remain on view until August. photographs by Oliver Kupper

"On the Verge of an Image: Considering Marjorie Keller" Group Show At The Historic Gamble House in Pasadena

On the Verge of an Image: Considering Marjorie Keller is a group exhibition of sculpture, painting, photography, video, and performance centered on the themes present in the work of under-recognized avant-garde filmmaker Marjorie Keller (1950-1994), co-curated by Los Angeles-based artists Alika Cooper and Anna Mayer. Cooper and Mayer seek to establish the significance of Keller’s contributions to visual culture, and to make visible states of being that are difficult to articulate or are deliberately avoided by mainstream culture. "On the Verge of an Image: Considering Marjorie Keller"  will be on view until December 11, 2016 at the Gamble House, 4 Westmoreland Pl, Pasadena, CA. photographs by Oliver Maxwell Kupper